Outside over Inside Analysis of Medical Students’ Education Efficacy in Cognitive Domain over a given Physiology Curricula

Aim: We tried to correlate, in cognitive domain, the second year medical students’ oral evaluation results to the efficacy of education they were provided, over our medical physiology curricula between 2004 and 2011.
Material and methods: We used the fact that during the mentioned period the curricula configuration for the two semesters of the second year was identical. We also used the fact that, for a given group of students and curricula, education and evaluation were performed by the same teacher. We compared three existing and unmodified configurations: 1. different groups of students, same curricula, different teachers, 2. same group of students, different curricula, same teacher and 3. same group of students, different curricula, different teachers. We also took an inside brief evaluation of students’ skills in cognitive domain at the beginning of the second year and tried to correlate it with final results.
Results: We couldn’t make any correlations because of logical contradictions of the configurations we compared. We couldn’t obtain, as an outside observer, concise information of what levels in cognitive domain students were evaluated on by different teachers. Merely we can say that education of the second year medical students over our physiology curricula cannot be efficient for a large amount of students who do not possess those compulsory cognitive skills that are required to study physiology.
Conclusions: The protocols used between 2004 and 2011 for evaluating medical students’ skills in cognitive domain over second year medical curricula cannot give accurate information for an outside evaluator.